Given the public reaction, there are some rather serious problems with the “Ground Zero Mosque” myth that need to be stated (as often as possible)—some obvious and some not-so-obvious and perhaps even some lessons to be learned from it.

The recent U.S. Social Forum in Detroit brought together some 10-15 thousand people, a lot of them young, to have conversations and participate in workshops and assemblies devoted to changing the existing rotten capitalist system. The USSF generated much enthusiasm, for the Forum was a huge opportunity for folks for the first time to meet others who were doing similar work in other places. These projects included issues like fighting foreclosures and evictions, school and hospital closings, police brutality and prisons, fetus fanatics, immigration xenophobia, and union givebacks; and building alternative institutions, environmental justice, transformative justice, participatory cultures, radical bicycling, &c. (Altogether there were well over 1000 workshops and assemblies over four days).

However, despite the excitement, the Forum fell far short of what’s necessary to address the current economic and political crisis of capitalism.

From the Forward by Andrew Flood (Workers Solidarity Movement--Ireland):

"This collection of essays by Wayne Price…will hopefully play a significant part in helping us build the movement we need…..This volume represents a good foundation to this process. It revisits many of the essential basic questions and lays down a coherent position in regard to them. Wayne's insights are important to us because they are based not just on a theoretical study of revolution but on five decades of practical experience in the North American left and the anarchist movement"

There will be two workshops again this year at the 5th Providence Anarchist Bookfair! They will be held from 2-5pm August 14th upstairs at the Perishable Theater on Empire Street as part of the book fair and the large music and art street party FOO FEST held by local community center AS220. Both workshops are courtesy of NEFAC comrades acting in personal capacity:

Communization: Insurrection, the "Alternative", and Class Composition

Presentation and discussion will focus on the "Communization" milieu: e.g.- Therorie Communiste, Tiqqun, Meeting, Trop Loin, Mouvement Communiste, the Call, the Coming Insurrection, etc. What do these groups have in common, what are they saying, what are the differences between them? What was their historical development and what similarities and relevance do they have for contemporary North American anarchism?

The Need for a Self-Defense Life Style in the Revolutionary Community

In the spirit of previous revolutionary groups, (i.e. Black Panthers, Latin Kings, etc) there is a need to go beyond simply accepting self defense in theory and through individual practice create a culture and a lifestyle (so to speak) of self defense and revolutionary community. This will be a discussion, not necessarily a self defense training.

At the outset, after reading Black Flame, it's impossible not to reflect on the massive amount of research that such a work must have entailed. The book is a narrative about anarchism and, with interest in anarchism on the rise worldwide, it could not have come at a better time. There are a couple of reasons for this. One, we need new narratives of the anarchist tradition to understand where we've been. Secondly, Black Flame contains critiques of the ways that "radical" circles contemporarily have too often turned away from the radical class politics that have always defined the socialist movement.

Ironically enough, this is both a major strength of the book, but also, in my opinion, one of its weaknesses. As Schmidt and van der Walt state their case early in the book, "'(c)lass struggle' anarchism, sometimes called revolutionary or communist anarchism, is not a type of anarchism; in our view, it is the only anarchism" (19--emphasis theirs). This essentially leads to the authors deciding throughout the beginning of the book who the "real" anarchists are and who gets defined out.

Queer is many things. It’s a critique of identity– critiquing/questioning the boxes and categories we are given to cage ourselves with. Example, we can be gay, straight, or bi. These are the choices we have. But they don’t describe reality and they do more to contain us than to liberate us. (Although, I have to note that people do find empowerment and community within these identities and I don’t mean to downplay that.) It’s a critique of the construction of sexuality– formed by the ideas we have to conceive of it. If who you fuck is what you are (i.e., “gay”) — then that’s a sexual identity. Or we can do sexuality differently– it’s not who we are but what we do– our acts.

The post-WWII boom was based on cheap oil. But oil is nonrenewable, polluting, and causes global warming. It was "cheap" because the capitalists did not pay to prepare for the day when it would be harder to access oil. We have reached that day, which is one aspect of the worldwide crisis of the return to the epoch of capitalist decay.

Building democratic mass movements in our workplaces and communities should be the strategy for combating the capitalist economic crisis and advancing revolutionary struggle. An alternative economic sector does not have the capacity to win short-term reforms or fundamentally transform society.